1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the area of Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and more particularly related to a method and system for providing telephony services between two calling parties over a data network without regulating the use of the services by offering a pair of gateway phones as a rendezvous to the data network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a data communication network of interconnected computers and computer networks around the world and is rapidly evolving to the point where it combines elements of telecommunications, computing, broadcasting, publishing, commerce, and information services into a revolutionary new model for global communications. Unlike a circuit-switched network, the Internet is a packet-switched network; communication on the Internet is accomplished by sending small packets of xe2x80x9cdataxe2x80x9d back and forth. In addition to the data itself, each packet contains an address to ensure that it is routed to the correct destination. The exact format of these packets is defined by the Internet Protocol (IP). The xe2x80x9cdataxe2x80x9d, of course, can be just about anything, including digitized and encoded xe2x80x9cvoice.xe2x80x9d Thus, xe2x80x9cVoice Over IPxe2x80x9d or VoIP is exactly what is means, voice delivered using the Internet Protocol, for managing the delivery of voice information using the Internet Protocol and sent over the Internet to facilitate telephone-like communications.
Voice, fax, and other forms of information have traditionally been carried over dedicated circuit-switched connections of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) that is typically controlled by one or more phone service carriers, such as Pacific Bell and ATandT. The use of the PSTN is measured in terms of seconds or minutes and times as well as the distance that collectively determine the overall cost of the use. As many businesses are growing in many different geographic locations including overseas, the cost of phone bills goes up drastically, worse when it comes together with the xe2x80x9cstandardxe2x80x9d charges in the business hours. There is thus a great need for ways that many businesses can use to control the cost of the phone bills while the organizations keep growing geographically.
Using the Internet, calls travel as packets of data on shared lines (i.e. the Internet), avoiding the tolls of the PSTN. Currently, unlike the traditional phone service, IP telephony service is relatively unregulated by government. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates phone-to-phone connections over the PSTN, but says they do not plan at least for now to regulate connections between phone users over a shared public data network.
There thus creates a great opportunity for non-phone businesses to get into this multibillion-dollar phone service market in direct competition against the local and long-distance phone companies. For example, Deltathree.com, Inc. offers PC-to-phone, unified messaging, global access calling cards and etc. Microsoft Corporation offers windows-based technologies that enable PC-to-phone and phone-to-phone services. Cisco Systems, Inc. offers certain equipment to facilitate the telephony services over the Internet.
The telephony services over the Internet are indeed more cost-effective than the same services over PSTN. With the advent of new technologies for the Internet, the quality of service (QoS) of the telephony services is catching up quickly. The idea of voice and data over single network is now becoming a reality. Nevertheless, many of the IP telephony service providers carry on the traditional service plans, namely the overall cost of the telephony services is determined by the usage of the network except the charging rate is now significantly lower. From a user perspective, the user still pays for what he/she uses in terms of minutes. Another service plan commonly used among the VoIP businesses is by selling equipment, either software or hardware. In other words, a user must come up with a large sum of financial resources to buy the equipment in order to take advantage of possible free telephony services over a public network.
Despite of many service plans, growing enterprises or even consumers desire for plans that not only offer a possible mechanism to use the telephony services over a public data network without incurring long distance tolls but also are manageable at beginning. Until such plans become available, the public data network would not be utilized at its best and the growing enterprises and the consumers would not be entirely benefited from the available communication resources.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above described problems and needs. It can be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the present invention, significantly apart from the prior art systems or service plans, introduces a service solution or model, that provides users an unlimited use of the telephony services for a fixed amount of fees regardless how long the services are used. Further the present invention does not require users to acquire any equipment in order to benefit from the services. It is believed for the first time in the VoIP industry, the present invention provides a service model that truly differentiates from the traditional billing-by-time model or the purchasing equipment model and offers a profound opportunity to populate the VoIP services among consumers and businesses.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for providing a telephony service through a data network to an entity that has a first location and a second location, the two locations remotely located with respect to each other and each having a number of telephonic devices, the method comprising:
entering a service plan with the entity, the service plan including a periodic payment from the entity, wherein the periodic payment stays unchanged for a substantial long period;
providing a first group of gateway phones installed closely enough to the first location, each of the first group of gateway phones assigned to a first number and coupled between the data network and a first telephone network so that any of the telephonic devices of the first location just needs to make a local call to be connected to one of the first group of gateway phones;
providing a second group of gateway phones installed closely enough to the second location, each of the second group of gateway phones assigned to a second number and coupled between the data network and a second telephone network so that any of the telephonic devices of the second location just needs to make a local call to be connected to one of the second group of gateway phones;
provisioning the entity by storing the first number of each of the first group of gateway phones and the second number of each of the second group of gateway phones in a gatekeeper server coupled to the data network;
establishing a connectionless link over the data network between one of the first group of gateway phones and one of the second group of gateway phones upon receiving a calling request from the one of the first group of gateway phones, the calling request being generated therein when one of the telephonic devices of the first location dials the first number of the one of the first group of gateway phones, the calling request including the first number of the one of the first group of gateway phones and a phone number of the one of the telephonic devices of the second location; and
wherein one of the second group of gateway phones automatically dials the phone number of the one of the telephonic devices of the second location so that the telephony service can be provided between the one of the telephonic devices of the first location and the one of the telephonic devices of the second location.
Accordingly, one of the objects in the present invention is to provide a new service solution to allow consumers and businesses alike to fully benefit from the widely accessible communication infrastructure, the Internet.